Research Design and Findings

Research Design and Findings

From the article, there were 2 different studies that were done to examine the questions on “How new commercials do not meet expectation”. The first study had addressed the question on creativity performance, creativity expectation, disconfirmation, and ad and brand attitudes. There were 4 hypotheses for study 1, it includes H1a : The perceived creativity of a brand’s prior advertisements increase expectation of creativity in its new ad. H1b: The discrepancy between expectation and performance with regard to the perceived creativity of the ad significantly affects ad attitudes. H1c: Ad attitudes mediate the effects of a discrepancy between creativity expectations and perceived performance on brand attitudes. And lastly, H1d: Negative disconfirmation of creativity predictions exerts greater influences on ad attitudes than does positive disconfirmation. Equal amount of males and females which came up to a total of 80 participants with average age of 21.01years were recruited in a university. All participants were informed to watch 5 commercial from Audi from 2007 to its new ad in 2011. To each ad, participants need to evaluate according to its creativity. At the end of the survey, the instructions suggest that Audi is running a new ad in 2011 and participants were asked to predict the creativity of the ad. For creative performance and expectation, the method that was used to measure was using a scale of 0 to 100 with higher scores indicating greater creativity. As for disconfirmation, objective disconfirmation and subjective disconfirmation were tested. For objective disconfirmation, the expected ratings were deducted from the performance rating. Positive scores indicate the ad is better than expected, while negative is the opposite. For subjective disconfirmation, questions like “ The ad is better/worse than I expected” were asked. After evaluation of the result, H1a, H1b, and H1c hypotheses were supported. However, H1d was not supported.

The second important characteristic in ad campaign is humor. The hypotheses that were tested range from H2a: The perceived humor of a brand prior advertisement increase expectation of humor in its new ad. H2b: The discrepancy between expectation and performance with regard to the perceived humor of the ad significantly affects ad attitudes. H2c: Ad attitudes mediate the effects of the discrepancy between humor expectation and perceived performance on brand attitudes. H2d: Negative disconfirmation of humor expectation exerts greater influences on attitudes than does positive disconfirmation. In study 2, the ads from Ikea were used to testify the result as the ad was the 2011 recipient of the prestigious Advertiser of the Year Award. The method used for